Li Dazhao

Li Dazhao (29 October 1888-28 April 1927) was the co-founder of the Communist Party of China, alongside Chen Duxiu.

Biography
Li Dazhao was born in Laoting, Hebei, China in 1888, and he studied political economy at Waseda University in Japan from 1913 to 1917 before returning to China in 1918. Cai Yuanpei hired him to lead the library at Peking University, and he influenced students such as Mao Zedong and taught them to explore the Bolshevik revolution as a means to reform Chinese society. Li saw Yuan Shikai's concessions to Japan as treason, and he would later move from anarchism to communism after the Chinese government put down the anti-Japanese protests. In 1921, Li and Chen Duxiu co-founded the Communist Party of China, and he was also elected to the Kuomintang executive committee in 1924. In 1927, after the KMT-CPC split, he was arrested at the Soviet embassy in Beijing, and he was hanged on 28 April 1927.